It doesn't take much to get actress Bijou Phillips singing the praises of New Orleans.

Visiting the city in late October for a red-carpet showing of her bluesy musical-thriller "Dark Streets" at the New Orleans Film Festival -- and which opens this weekend for a theatrical run -- the 28-year-old Phillips confessed she hadn't spent much time in the city.

"But my dad has a song about it," she said, referring to the minor 1970 solo hit "Mississippi" by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. "I forget how it goes..."

Then, she remembered. Tapping out a drum track on her denimed thighs, she launched into it:

"The Mississippi River runs like molasses in the summertime.
"And me, you know, I don't hardly mind.
"Sippin' on a beer on Bourbon Street and I'm sittin' easy
"Don't get me wrong, it takes a lot to please me. "Have a seat an' take a load off your feet, and she said 'Yes'
"So I said, 'I like your dress.
"'Swamps all around make ya feel kinda funny, don't they honey?'
"She crossed her legs and looked at me funny. "Down on the bayou, why, you never know just what you're doin'
"Down on the bayou, why, you never know just what you're doin' (what you're doin')"

Her singing voice accentuates the sweet, baby-doll quality in her voice. But there's a grown-up knowingness about Bijou Phillips, too. This is a young woman, after all, who -- at 15 years old -- was living on her own in New York City while plugging away at a modeling career.

Since then, she has enjoyed a career as a singer, and, more recently, as an actress, appearing in films ranging from "Almost Famous" to "Choke" to "Hostel Part 2" to the punk biopic "What We Do is Secret."

"Dark Streets," though, is singular if for no other reason than for the way it merges her multiple muses. She gets a chance to act in the noir crime thriller, but it's also a musical, and, better yet, it's set in an era -- the jazzy 1930s -- that has always spoken to her.

In it, she plays singer Crystal Labelle, a featured attraction at a jazz nightclub whose owner stumbles onto a noir mystery involving the questionable motivations of the power players at the local power company.

The film is directed by Rachel Samuels, whose background in visual arts is as conspicuous in "Dark Streets" as Dr. John's voice is on the film's impressive soundtrack, adding another attractive element to the film for Phillips.

Sitting with Samuels in the lobby of the W Hotel on Poydras Street to chat about the film a few hours before unveiling it at the festival, Phillips described it as a dream project, and a wonderfully risky one at that, given its unconventional artistry.

"I think taking chances and taking risks are what art's about," Phillips said. "If you're not doing that, then you're not making art. Art is putting yourself on the line: 'Judge me,' 'Look at me,' 'This is the best I've got.' If you're not doing that, then I don't know really what you're doing."

It played right into the vision that Samuels -- who has cousins who live in Metairie -- had for her film.

"Our motto on-set was 'Go big or go home,'¤" Samuels said. "I think that we approached the film, all of us, in that way. This really was an experiment."

Phillips, shaped by the tastes of her mother, model-artist-actress Genevieve Waite, was weaned on the music of Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. So her role in "Dark Streets" meant an opportunity to immerse herself in the world of some of her musical heroes.

Even better, she got a chance to write (with Harper Simon, son of Paul Simon) and perform on-screen a period song -- the oddly melancholy show-stopper, "Let's Be Nice Some More."

To do it, she studied the American jazz standard as a genre, modeling her song on those tried and tested gems. It was a challenge, she said, but one she relished.

"There's a science to it; the jazz standard's got a thing," she said. "I was taking the basic formula of the jazz standard and making it a little modern, but really sticking to it. There are parts of it that are a little bit modern -- obviously, because I'm here, and I'm not from back then. (But) I feel like I came pretty close to making a jazz standard."

Given all the inspiration that Phillips, and the film as a whole, drew from jazz and the blues, it's fitting that 50 percent of the profits from the film will be donated to The Blues Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping musicians affected by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Gustav.

"You know, the blues are everywhere in the film, and throughout the film are all these amazing artists," Samuels said. "And everyone who made the film felt like New Orleans is the home of the blues and that we had to do our part since we were using all these incredible traditions in the movie."

As if to prove the point, after the red-carpet screening at the Film Festival, Samuels and Phillips attended a star-studded "Dark Streets" party -- which doubled as a Blues Initiative fundraiser -- at the New Orleans House of Blues.

"You know, you should sing that song," Samuels told Phillips in a burst of inspiration after Phillips' impromptu rendition of her father's song. "You really should."

Phillips politely shrugged off the suggestion: "I don't even know all the words."

Then she got up and left, to sneak a cigarette on Poydras Street, outside the no-smoking W lobby. She was singing as she left.

"Down on the bayou, why, you never know just what you're doin' ""Down on the bayou, why, you never know just what you're doin' (what you're doin')."